


Dayenu

by muggle95



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Jewish Character, Lovegood family feels, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-21 09:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18140387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95
Summary: The year Luna is 10, Pesach feels harder to celebrate. (Lots of things are different since her mother's death)





	Dayenu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



> Thanks again to [TyeDye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_bus_of_doom) for being a beta on short notice

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” Luna recited before she could be prompted. “On all other nights, we eat chametz and matzah, but on this night why do we only eat matzah?”

There was a pause while Xenophilius glanced expectantly at his wife’s empty chair, then scrambled to find his place in the Haggadah again, which he’d set down in order to banish the afikomen to a different place in the house. “We eat only matzah because our ancestors could not wait for their bread to rise,” he read back, with only the slightest hitch in his voice.

Luna frowned over the seder plate as he continued to read, and even as she asked the next question by rote memory when her dad’s voice paused. The charoset was much lumpier than in previous years, and half the boiled egg had been torn off during her clumsy attempts to remove the shell.

The missing egg wasn’t what made the room feel horribly empty.

As they were spilling their wine and pumpkin juice, reciting the plagues, Luna couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t we supposed to chant this part?”

Her dad’s eyes dimmed, and Luna flinched and glanced away, spilling far more juice over “Pestilence” than she meant to. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. But this part just didn’t sound right, without her mum’s rhythmic chanting, slowly increasing in volume, until the room seemed to echo when she got to “Death! Of the First Born!” and the ringing silence that would follow.

Luna shivered at the memory of her mum’s thin, calloused hands, cradling her face gently, in beautiful, bittersweet contrast to the harsh proclamation of death that would have come for her if she had been Egyptian in that time, while her dad gave the silence a moment to sink in before leading the songs. She always felt so loved in that moment. She blinked back tears. Pesach was a time for celebration, not for crying.

Their recitation of Dayenu – reading the English translation first, as Pandora had always insisted, so that Luna would understand what she was singing about, was a bit stiff, but when they switched to singing the Hebrew, Luna got up to dance. She twirled around in narrow figure-eights, arms painting an abstract picture in the air, like she and her mum always did together, while her dad kept a steady tempo singing. When she closed her eyes, she could almost forget that she was alone on the floor.

When she opened her eyes again, she met her dad’s gaze almost by accident. He was smiling fondly at her, and the smile stretched all the way to his eyes for the first time in months. She smiled back, as she joined him at the table again.

When they ate the maror, Luna deliberately took too-big of a bite of horseradish, which she had always done accidentally in the past, although, sure enough, she underestimated the too-large bite, and nearly choked as the spice hit her palate. Her eyes watered again, this time in pain instead of grief. She grabbed for her pumpkin juice to wash it down. Her father laughed at her. She had barely recovered enough to breathe again before the laughter infected her too. It felt so healing, to laugh together at such a small but persistent mistake.

When he served up the matzah ball soup, the first course of their festive dinner, he had to scoop matzah balls from the bottom of the pot, to put one in each of their bowls. Luna sliced a bit of hers off with her spoon.

The matzah ball was soaked through with delicious chicken broth, dense, but made with no less love. It tasted of hope.

It would be enough

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus:  
> "Alright, Moonbeam, you’d better go find the afikomen before the nargles do.”


End file.
